Conflicts at University

When students and rectory do not have a common opinion about the directions of the biggest university of Brazil, the chaos dominates

By Caroline Nunes da Silveira CorrêaNovember 2011.

Since last October, University of São Paulo has been one of the most commented subjects on the news, and it is not about common things, as vestibular. The presence of the police in the campus creates a great polemic and starts discussions about things that happened at the university. On one hand, students are favorable toward the Military Police’s retreat from the place and the end of the agreement between them and the university. On the other hand, there are people who want to keep the police there because they have been worried about the security since a student was shot and died.

A lot of protests have happened since the beginning of the confrontations between the police and students, which started with the detention of three people caught carrying weed on Oct 27. On the same night, students decided to go to the FFLCH (Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas) building to protest against the police. According to the students, they want to remove the police from the campus not exactly to have freedom to use drugs: this was just what triggered the complaints about the agressivity of the police.

On Nov 2, some students of Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas and some servers decided to occupy the rectory building. It caused the cancellation of classes and a lot of problems with the university services. When the police decided to remove the students, on Nov 8, after conflicts and depredation, an assembly decided to start a strike.

With this entire situation, a lot of problems inside the university came out. The lack of communication between students and rector creates difficulties to make an agreement about what to do concerning the police.